The result should look something like this:
Additionally, can also use Change Icon to use the icon of the game you’re adding. If you’re still unsure how it should work you can watch a video bellow of bnetlauncher in action:

Destiny 2

Bungie has decided to implement anti-cheat mechanisms that also cause most overlays to not work as expected.

Troubleshooting

In case of problems logging can be enabled by creating a enablelog.txt file inside %localappdata%\madalien.com\bnetlauncher\, you can open the location by pasting the path into explorer or the run dialog in windows (WinKey+R)

Aditional options

There’s also the following additional options provided by command line switches:

--timeout <seconds>, -t <seconds> changes how many seconds it tries to look for the game before giving an error (15 seconds by default).

--notask, -n starts the launcher directly instead of trying to use a scheduled task

--leaveopen, -l leaves the client open after launcher the game. If combined with --notask option it will show you as playing on steam until you close the client.

Adding more Games

From v2.00 onward bnetlauncher uses a internal gamedb.ini to control how games are launched. More games or custom configs can be manually added by creating a gamedb.ini file in:

%localappdata%\madalien.com\bnetlauncher\gamedb.ini

the directory where the bnetlauncher executable is located.

A gamesdb.ini.sample is distributed with bnetlauncher containing a copy of the built in shortcuts.

Important: Those defaults are not changeble. bnetlauncher will always override them with it’s internal gamesdb.ini file. However it is possible to create different entries with custom options.

noargs doesn’t throw an error when retrieving blank arguments from the game

waitforexit leave bnetlauncher open and waiting until the game existing

nolaunch don`t directly launch the game but just open the client and try to find the game for an additional 60s this can in theory be used for hacky PTR support.

Known Issues

Destiny 2 will not have Steam Overlay or any associate features when using bnetlauncher. This is intended by Bungie and cannot be fixed. Steam Input users can use https://alia5.github.io/GloSC/ to work around it.

Users of MSI Afterburner, Fraps and other overlay software might experience crashes do to incompatibility with their own overlay and steam’s, to solve the issue disable the 3rd party application overlay.

The game, bnetlauncher and steam must all have the same running permissions to work properly, this means if one of them is running has Administrator/Elevated Permissions, then all of them must also be run has Administrator/Elevated Permissions.

It’s not possible to automatically launch battle.net client PTR versions of games, the client provides no direct option to do this, however a workaround can be done by creating a new game entry and the nolaunch option and manually clicking play.

Default launching the client trough a scheduled task may be incompatible with some setups, workaround is provided with notask switch/option.

Starting multiple copies of Startcraft Remastered may cause bnetlauncher to show an error since the game only allows one instance to be run at the same time.

There’s no built in routine to clean up the log files if they pile up (logging is disabled by default)

Uninstalling

To remove all traces of bnetlauncher from your system:

type ‘Task Scheduler’ in start menu and open it, expand library and delete bnetlauncher folder to remove the tasks used to start the client

type %localappdata%\madalien.com in start menu and open the folder, delete bnetlauncher folder to remove log and gamedb.ini files

Special Thanks

internet coder Maruf for ghost tray icon fix code github Ethan-BB for the new parameters to launch games on battle.net.
github RobFreiburger and iMintty for Starcraft Remastered and Destiny 2 support respectively.
/u/fivetwofoureight for creating and allowing me to use his icon. /u/malecden, Maverick, /u/sumphatguy and others for their help pointing out bugs.

The game, bnetlauncher and steam must all have the same running permissions to work properly, this means if one of them is running has Administrator/Elevated Permissions, then all of them must also be run has Administrator/Elevated Permissions.

Seems Black Ops 4 uses an intermediary process to launch, this bnetlauncher looses track of it. I’ll try to make a workaround, in the meantime OSOL should be imune to the issue if you want a solution right now.

I had logging in issues with OSOL but this works thanks! ^^… just got that issue where the controller doesnt work (in any game), only way ive been able to fix it in the past is reinstalling windows. any idea how to get around it?

Steam controller support is out of my control, all bnetlauncher does is facilitate launching a battle.net game under steam.
You can always use GloSC to try and workaround game limitations regarding steam controller.

“Couldn’t find a game started trough battle.net Client.
Please check if battle.net did not encounter an error and the game can be launched normally from the battle.net client.

bnetlauncher will now exit.”

But it works if i hit Play in the bnet launcher after i open the steam shortcut, if not, the error happens. ¿Is there a way for it to auto hit play? Its uncomfortable having to hit play 2 times (one in steam, one in bnet)
Thanks

I just fixed it by unistalling and downloading again the blizzar app, i had some troubles unistalling the app with the control panel so i deleted the blizzard and bnet folders manually. Hope this help if someone gets the same problem.

Newer versions of bnetlauncher use the uninstaller information to get the install location of the battle.net client. I’ve been noticing it occasionally fails due to “broken” installations so I’m trying to find a better source for that information in future releases.

My Bnet client is installed on my secondary hard drive as well as Steam and when I use bnetlauncher I get an error saying “Couldn’t find the Battle.net Client Exe at the following location: ‘C:\Battle.net\battle.net.exe’, Please check if Battle.net is properly installed”. I never had this issue with the previous versions of bnetlauncher. Any idea how to fix this?

The new version of bnetlauncher gets the battle.net client install location trough it’s uninstall registry entry. I’ve tested a new install in a alternative drive and it does fill it in properly . So try to reinstall the battle.net client to correct the uninstaller entry path.

The battle.net got updated today and I can no longer run the game with steam overlay normally. I need to run the Steam shortcut, and after that manually click on Play in the battle.net for it to work. (Overwatch). Thanks for this awesome helper!

Hi!
I loved the help and the exe you provided a lot!
I was wondering though, if there is a possibility to add an access to the wow beta profile. I was invited recently and was excited to play it with the controller.
Thank you!

However I wanted to talk to you about a problem that I suffered recently (and on the PC of my wife too). Since the last Battle.net update, when Battle.net is already running (minimized as a tray icon) and when you double click on the shortcut created from Steam (Characteristic of the shortcut: Name: Overwatch / Target: “D:\My Games\Steam\BnetLauncher.exe” / Start In: “D:\My Games\Steam” / Launch Option: OW) the game does not run, the only way to unlock the process is to double click on the Battle.net tray icon, and the game is launched automatically (with Steam overlay).

Here is the log when double click on the shortcut created from Steam :

Hello! I love this launcher.. it works well with all my Blizzard games. However, today I can’t use it. It gives me this error…

Error: URI handle broken
—————————
Some of the battle.net client functionality seem to be missing, without it bnetlauncher will not be able to function. Please reinstall the battle.net to fix the situation.

Alternatively, if you’re still getting this message after reinstalling the client a repair can be attempted, this will create the missing registry keys and prompt you to add them to your registry (you must answer yes).

Would you like to attempt the repair?
If you choose No bnetlauncher will exit.
—————————
Yes No
—————————
🙁

I have also not been able to get the launcher to work with Destiny 2. I’ve been using it for OW just fine. I have been reading that Destiny 2 isn’t allowing certain capture/streaming services to be used so I am suspecting it may have something to do with that.

The Destiny 2 issue is being tracked on github and right now there’s not much I’m capable of doing afaik. All I can do is hope that Valve and Bungie will work together to allow Steam Input to work at the very least.

I can’t seem to get this launcher to work with Destiny 2, it works perfectly fine with Overwatch though.

I’m able to launch Destiny 2, but the Steam overlay doesn’t appear. Is there something I could do to fix this? I set the launch options to ‘dst2’ and put the ‘bnetlauncher.exe’ into Steam as a non-Steam game. I’ve tried launching it with and without Battlenet launched, but I run into the same issue.

Hey, I really love the bnetlauncher, I am using it every day with Overwatch. I’ve read on Bungie website that overlays are not supported (with some exceptions) .. I played Destiny 2 beta with this launcher to have the Steam Overlay, but now I am scared to launch it again, because I could be banned forever because of it. Is there any risk using it? I used it already and I didn’t have problem but I am scared now. (info about the Destiny 2 and overlays – https://www.bungie.net/en/Help/Article/46101 )

That will depend on Bungie considering using steam overlay as a banable offence. bnetlauncher itself does do anything nefarious, it simply closes the game and reopens it under steam.

In the end only Bungie can tell you for sure if you can be banned or not, all I can tell you is that I will personally still continue to use it with destiny 2, same as I’ve with every other game on battle.net game since i created bnetlauncher.

Thanks for your help, daf! I really appreciate it. I uninstalled my Battle.Net client, rebooted, made sure there were no lingering Battle.Net leftovers in the registry, then reinstalled the client. That got the URI associations in place and now bnetlauncher works flawlessly!

Update: The fix you’ve put in seems to have done the trick, stream just sits on a black screen for a few seconds until destiny2.exe finally gets brought to the foreground at which point everything behaves as expected.

Those timings are rough, but the second instance of the process simply comes from the necessity to attempt to stream the game a second time coupled with some clever logic in the game to not try to display two instances of itself at once if two are open (if i drop back to the host desktop while stream2 is running i can see two instances of destiny2.exe with different PIDs in task manager).

So the second issue isn’t really one I’d expect you to try fix, it was more just for background of the workaround I’ve used and the knock on impact.

This is pretty awesome, I just found it when trying to solve an issue Streaming Destiny 2 I recalled having with Overwatch.

Works perfectly with other Blizzard Games I have but seems to be an issue around a delay in Destiny 2 (could just be a beta issue) whereby the launcher is closed before Destiny 2 has loaded on to the screen so causes the streaming to stop. If i then wait 10sec for the game to appear on the host monitor a second streaming session will connect to it and run fine, but does mean when the game is then closed a second instance opens (there seems to be some single instance limiting/queuing going on in the game itself that means if two instances of destiny2.exe are running, the second sits idle in a preloading state until the first closes). Obviously this isn’t a massive deal, just have to remember to VNC onto the host and close down the second instance of the program after I’m done with it, but thought it would be worth the feedback if you wern’t aware of it.

Would there be any way to introduce a config option to add a delay to closing the launcher to prevent the initial streaming session from shutting down if this isn’t something widespread?

First seems to be bnetlauncher exiting too quickly and causing the steam home streaming to think Destiny 2 was closed, I’ve added a worked around in version 1.15 that should fix that, if it didn’t let me know and I’ll try to come up with another solution.

The second issue is multiple instances of Destiny 2 launching? I’ve not encountered this yet, could you provide more detail?

Thanks for making bnetlauncher! I’m trying to get it to launch Destiny 2 through Steam as a non-Steam shortcut, but I’m stuck.

I don’t know how, my battle.net client doesn’t seem to have any kind of URI association. I’ve reinstalled the battle.net client twice. Start+R and battlenet://dst2 gives me a “There is no program associated to perform the requested action” error.

Any suggestions? Should I try the reg file you posted in the comments above? Thanks a lot for the help!

@Number 6, The reg file has since been removed since reinstalling the battle.net client would usually fix broken battlenet:// association. If it’s not working there might be something else causing the issue, regardless if you want to try and manually fix it you can use this regfile to manually add battlenet:// association, just be sure to edit the path to the battle.net client executable taking care to use double \.

Not sure if it is possible or if it even applies, do you have the launcher URL for StarCraft:Remastered? Or a update to your launcher to include this? I’ve been trying to get steam overlay (or steam to launch it at all for that matter).

I’d actually started work on a tool to wrap non-Steam games and automatically apply any workarounds needed to get the overlay working. This is also a C# project.

However, I was missing the trick of grabbing the command-line args which Battle.net passed to Overwatch.exe, then killing and restarting it under the ‘wrapper’ application. Very, very good idea!

My initial work on my version works something like this: (btw, I named it SteamBogie.exe – it’ll make most English-speakers chuckle, but it’s also a British English term for the wheel/axle/suspension assembly on railway carriages. Keeps with the Steam/Valve thing ;))

… and it’ll do whatever’s needed to get Origin games compliant. This seems to involve:

* Quitting Origin if running
* Launching the game EXE with the Origin EXE path added as an argument (that can be looked up in the registry)
* Monitoring the process list to watch for the game EXE’s presence
* Quitting and perhaps restoring Origin’s running/not-running state after the game EXE disappears.

Origin and uplay games can be started directly from the game exe, they will launch the client if needed and start running. The launch chain is a bit crazy tough, the game closes and launches the client which chain spawns a load of other processes which eventually launches the game for real (seriously check it with process explorer). So all you need to do then is monitor the game and close the launcher processes after it closes.

It’s something I’ve thought about but been putting off due to not having any really clever way of doing it. For uplay I’ve already done something the “dumb way” with https://github.com/dafzor/nouplaynag and I suppose the same core idea would work with origin too.

Hey man, program’s just throwing an error window “bnetlauncher has stopped working” trying to run diablo 3. I’m assuming it’s something to do with the change from battle.net client to blizzard app. I thought it might’ve just been a name change, but seems like it’s something else.

There hasn’t been any change that required an update at the time of the client name change. First thing I’d ask you to try is getting the latest version, if there’s still an issue comment again and I’ll try to help you.

I’ve used it previously without any issues but after a reinstall of Windows I have issues with the bnetlauncher. Sometimes it works fine but most of the time the launcher starts but doesn’t start the game and after a moment I get the error:

“Couldn’t find a game started through Battle.net Client.
Please check if you’re using a valid parameter.
Aborting process and exiting.”

I can still launch manually and will see the overlay…sort of (Shift-Tab brings it up, I see the FPS counter but new messages are not visible in the lower right corner as it should).

Are you using any overlay software like MSI afterburner? Are you starting battle.net as admin? Those are two things that could cause problems, other then that i’d need to see a log (see instructions.txt for how to enable it).